


Souvenirs

by fojee



Category: Japanese Drama, Ouroboros (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 04:02:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3922135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fojee/pseuds/fojee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hibino Mizuki knew very well that the past can be a burden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Souvenirs

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the events of the series. Unbetaed. (Also written because I felt that the Ouroboros tag was too lonely, and because the image of Tacchan's drawing wouldn't leave me.) Can be read in conjunction with my previous story "Twin Dragons" or as a stand-alone.

Mahoroba's secrets came to light, but in the end, it was only Kitagawa-san who bore the full brunt of the punishment. The other policemen who had been in Public Safety had already been tidied away. The rich people who used the orphanage as organ farm had expensive lawyers who found loopholes for them to escape from. And going after the recipients of those illegal transplants would have accomplished nothing. 

After the media feasted on the news for weeks and months, the scandal died away. People forget things so quickly.

Was this justice? Hibino Mizuki often asked herself. Maybe in a way she had been infected by Ryuzaki-san's desire for revenge. She, too, had lost a precious person to Mahoroba. Maybe two, though she probably could not claim Ryuzaki-san as someone that had been hers to lose. 

She moved forward as best as she could. As a detective, it was her job to give closure to victims' families. It was harder to give it to herself. But she strove and struggled to. 

\---

There was a box at the bottom of her closet. It was filled with things that she had received after that night. 

Mishima-san had pulled strings so that she could get a copy of Kashiwaba Yuiko's video, since it was the evidence that her father gave his life for. She accepted it with mixed feelings but refused to watch it again. Instead, she placed it in that box and hid it away.

A few days later, Sosuke-san had showed up at her door, wearing another ridiculous wig. He handed her something without a word, before disappearing again. It was the last time she would see him. It was a group picture of the children of Mahoroba, with their Yuiko-sensei standing in the middle, arms stretched to her sides as if she could hug them all. Mizuki spent a night crying over Ryuzaki-san's smiling face on it, before putting it away in that box.

Then one month after that night, Fukamachi-san called her and asked to meet her in an outdoor cafe. He was working for a new yakuza boss, and so Mizuki, as a detective, didn't want to keep ties with him. But she couldn't refuse his request. When they met, he handed her a sketchpad with a black cover.

"I have cleared away Danno-san's things, because my loyalty for my new boss must not be questioned in any way," he said to her politely. "But this one thing I could not destroy, Hibino-san. And you are the only person I could entrust it to." 

After he had left, under the too-bright sun, Mizuki found herself paging through the small book. As expected, it was full of beautifully drawn pictures of Kashiwaba Yuiko, some smiling, some fierce and frowning. Further on, there were drawings of Ryuzaki-san. Mizuki found them fascinating, the many faces of Ryuzaki-san as a child, as a teenager, one of him wearing his police uniform. Most of them were smiling. Then Mizuki reached a page, and found one drawing of her father. It was not very detailed, but it captured his stern spirit somehow. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and she had to force herself to turn to the next page. 

Her own face stared back at her. And at the bottom, written faintly in pencil were the words, "I will protect Ikuo." She closed it and hugged it to her chest. And that night she put it in the box, though once in a while, she would take it out to look at the drawings again, wondering what Danno Tatsuya had been thinking while making them. It was somehow too intimate a thing.

She had been the one to put away Ryuzaki Ikuo's possessions. There weren't a lot. His apartment had been practically empty, as if he hadn't actually done anything there but sleep. But there were some books that she had put in a small box and then forgot about. After seeing Danno-san's sketchpad, she took out that box and looked through them. Most of them were reference books for detective procedures, some left over from the academy. There were a stack of detective notebooks, too, and the sight of Ryuzaki-san's handwriting sent a pang through her. 

Then she found what she didn't know she was looking for. It was a cheap thing, a spiral bound notebook that had seen better days. She opened them and found, written in a child's hand, letters to Yuiko-sensei. 

She read each one. Close to the end of the notebook, there was one dated about a week before her own father's death. It read:

_Yuiko-sensei,_

_I am sorry if it seems that I am wavering from the path that I promised to take. With Tacchan at my side, I vowed that we would find your killers and make them pay. But maybe that was a child's conceit. And now as an adult, I keep wondering what revenge really means. Slowly, I am remembering more of that night. But the memories that come raise more questions. And I am starting to wonder who you really were, sensei. I am starting to wonder about every other memory I have. The past is suddenly more uncertain and treacherous._

_In front of me now is a woman that I care about. I hate that I have pulled her into this. I hate that I lie to her every day. I hate that the day might come when she will lose the father that she loves by my hand. Nowadays, I find it hard to look in the mirror. Were you facing a choice like this too, that night?_

_If you are watching over me, please watch over her, too._

_Ryuzaki Ikuo._

Then the last one, dated days after, read:

_Sensei,_

_Tacchan and I have lived very different lives from the ones that you have imagined for us. I am sorry for that. But it is not that the hatred fuels me on. I just don't want to let go of the love that you showed us. I am a little afraid that if I say tomorrow that I give up, Tacchan wouldn't argue with me. He would let go of me without another thought. But it would mean that the past has been erased, just like what that cop had said, like it had never happened._

_Even if that past feels like a burden, it is all that I have. I am sure Tacchan feels the same way. Your love, sensei, might have been a small thing to you. But it was everything to us._

_Please help me to make the right choice._

_Ryuzaki Ikuo_

\---

People forget things so quickly. 

Hibino Mizuki was striving and struggling to move forward. Some days, she thought about taking off the ouroboros necklace, maybe tucking it away into that box with the rest of her painful memories. But she didn't. Because even the painful memories were treasures, souvenirs of a past that had brought her to where she was now.

Ryuzaki Ikuo and Danno Tatsuya carried the burden of their pasts for twenty years. 

She could bear theirs, and her own, a little longer.


End file.
